A bill signed by President Barack Obama on August 10th was supposed to save teachers’ jobs. It was a $26 Billion dollar spending bill that allocated $10 billion for education spending so school districts could rehire laid off teachers or prevent districts from having to fire more teachers. Speaker Nancy Pelosi thought it was so important that she called the House of Representatives back from August recess to pass it. However, there seems to be a problem. A report that came out last week notes that some of the states …
The Washington Post today calls on D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty to take a stand on the embattled D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. PARENTS LOVE IT. Students benefit from it. But neither the White House nor most Democrats in Congress had the backbone to support a unique program that provides vouchers to low-income D.C. families in search of better educational opportunities. Now the question is whether D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) — who has made education his priority — has the guts his party leaders lack and will seek to save …
While China rings in 2010 as the year of the tiger, American families and taxpayers might soon be able to refer to 2010 as the year school choice became the norm. Five states in particular are worth watching: Illinois, Indiana, Florida, Virginia and New Jersey. Ironically perhaps, Illinois is home to the most notable opponents of school choice in D.C. – Senator Durbin, the chief architect of the plan to eliminate the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, Education Secretary Arne Duncan who exercised school choice by purchasing a home in northern …
The president’s proposed FY2011 budget increases funding to the Department of Education by $3.5 billion. But despite this significant increase, his budget effectively cuts the freedom of choice and educational opportunities from the lives of children living in the District of Columbia. What began last year as a low-profile attempt to quietly phase out the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program has become a noticeable agenda of denying school choice to District families. Representative John Boehner wrote about the administration’s decision today: “President Obama’s job-killing budget does away with school choice in …
Speaking on education this past March, President Obama told Americans that he believes in only “one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: It’s not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works.” OK, great! Here’s something that works: the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. It’s a federal initiative that is currently giving 1,715 extremely disadvantaged children a reprieve from the infamously awful and dangerous public schools in the nation’s capital. It’s supported by many local Democrats and Republicans. Previously near-illiterate children now …
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cqWuVb7FNc[/youtube] “Be bold,” says James Tooley when you want education reform. He’d know. For the last decade the Newcastle University Professor has been traveling throughout the world’s poorest regions studying systems of education. What he’s discovered may be surprising. In the poorest countries on earth, parents are choosing private schools because they don’t want to acquiesce to the mediocrity of public schools…Our research has shown that these schools are outperforming the government schools at a fraction of the cost.
Liberty lost one of its finest advocates this morning. Rose Director Friedman died of heart failure in Davis, Calif. She was thought to be 98. Rose was best known as the wife of Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, who died in 2006. But Rose, an economist herself, was Milton’s intellectual partner. Together, they co-authored the international best-seller “Free to Choose” and other books. Together, they taught the world important lessons about economics and policy. Their life’s work improved the lives of millions around the world, and their lessons will …
Support for school choice in Washington, D.C. continues to grow. The latest national voice to call for saving the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program is MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. Check out this Hardball interview with RNC Chairman Michael Steele: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFUyqr6QsFY[/youtube] Mr. Matthews says: “These opportunity scholarships should be maintained.” Later in the interview, Mr. Matthews makes an interesting point about how the opportunity to attend a private school made a big difference in the life of Judge Sotomayor: “Cardinal Spellman high school is one of the reasons why this woman, Sotomayor got …
Writing in Forbes yesterday, the Goldwater Institute’s Clint Bolick argues that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Ricci v. DeStafano should result in renewed attention to education reform and the need to improve educational opportunities for all people: “[The ruling] also brought the nation closer to an important day of reckoning. When blacks and Hispanics flunk examinations, the cause is less likely to be discrimination than the appalling educational conditions to which most economically disadvantaged black and Hispanic children are consigned. “Affirmative action” programs that leap-frog less-qualified minorities over more-qualified non-minorities …
Derrell Bradford of Excellent Education for Everyone highlights a disturbing finding from the New Jersey Department of Education at NJ.com—a majority of NJ students who failed the high school exit exam (described by state education commission as “middle school level”) had apparently taken and passed courses in Geometry, Algebra I and II, and Biology. This is evidence of rampant social promotion: We have argued that New Jersey has two education systems. One you attend if you are white and live in an affluent suburb, and one you attend if you …
